Satan Black

Doc Savage (publication order; no omnibus) #141

by Kenneth Robeson (House Name), Lester Dent

The Man of Bronze is pegged for murder in a family feud over a pipeline stretching from Arkansas to the Atlantic. The precious oil it carries is needed by the army for the invasion of Europe that will end the war. Only Doc Savage and his fearless sidekicks can find the real culprit and see that the pipeline gets built — at the risk of death by dynamite!

150 pages, Paperback

About the author

Kenneth Robeson was the house name used by Street and Smith Publications as the author of their popular character Doc Savage and later The Avenger. Though most Doc Savage stories were written by the author Lester Dent, there were many others who contributed to the series, including:

William G. Bogart
Evelyn Coulson
Harold A. Davis
Lawrence Donovan
Alan Hathway
W. Ryerson Johnson

Lester Dent is usually considered to be the creator of Doc Savage. In the 1990s Philip José Farmer wrote a new Doc Savage adventure, but it was published under his own name and not by Robeson. Will Murray has since taken up the pseudonym and continued writing Doc Savage books as Robeson.

All 24 of the original stories featuring The Avenger were written by Paul Ernst, using the Robeson house name. In order to encourage sales Kenneth Robeson was credited on the cover of The Avenger magazine as "the creator of Doc Savage" even though Lester Dent had nothing to do with The Avenger series. In the 1970s, when the series was extended with 12 additional novels, Ron Goulart was hired to become Robeson.

Reviews

[Fraser Sherman · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.5, maybe. A fairly standard pulp adventure with Doc investigating sabotage crippling a vitally needed oil pipeline. Almost nothing stands out about this except the odd name, which has nothing to do with the story (it's nobody's name, nobody's alias, and I can't see it as a metaphor for anything).

[Jeff J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pulp novel featuring Doc Savage. Pipeline sabotage hinders the war effort.